tyrant and slave, prude and coquette, alike lie forgotten underground. Man's first estate is dwelt on, and the effects of the coming of sin, then the work of Christ and the triumph of the human spirit over death and the grave. The poem ends with a diatribe on the folly of the fear of death.] We wish to be where sweets unwithering bloom; Conducts us to our home, and lands us safe On the long-wished-for shore. Prodigious change!— By unperceived degrees he wears away, Yet, like the sun, seems larger at his setting. That's hampered, struggles hard to get away, Nor shall it hope in vain; the time draws on Each soul shall have a body ready furnished ; With a new elegance of form unknown To its first state. Nor shall the conscious soul Mistake its partner, but amidst the crowd Singling its other half into its arms Shall rush, with all th' impatience of a man absent, With haste runs over every different room, In pain to see the whole. Thrice happy meeting! Nor time nor death shall ever part them more. 'Tis but a night, a long and moonless night; We make the grave our bed, and then are gone. Thus, at the shut of even, the weary bird Leaves the wide air, and in some lonely brake Cowers down and doses till the dawn of day, Then claps his well-fledged wings, and bears away. THE AUTHOR OF ALBANIA. Fl. 1737. All that is known of the author of Albania: a Poem addressed to the Genius of Scotland, is told by Dr. John Leyden in his little volume of Scottish Descriptive Poems (Edin. 1803). The author and the original editor, he says, are equally unknown, and of the original edition of the poem, printed at London for T. Cooper, in 1737, only one copy is known to exist. From the advertisement to that single copy Leyden quotes the sentence, "The poem was wrote by a Scots clergyman, some years ago, who is since dead," and from an allusion in the poem itself the author appears to have been twenty-four years of age at the time of composition. Leyden further quotes a verse of Aaron Hill declaring the author and also the earlier editor of the poem to have been Scotsmen, and he states that the preservation of the piece is due to the taste of "the ingenious author of The Minstrel." This last fact, and a reference to "Devana" in the body of the piece, point to the conclusion that the poet was a native, or at least a resident, of Aberdeen. Nothing further has been discovered of the author of Albania, and he seems to have left no other work to the world. Within the short length of its 296 lines, however, the poem contains passages which are hardly surpassed by anything written in its time. It is put together without artistic method, and some of its parts treat of matters hardly suited for poetry; but throughout it has a fresh strength and a breath of soil and sea that are of a kind by themselves, and must rank the unknown author among the original geniuses of his age. The passage descriptive of the superstition of invisible hunting has been quoted by Beattie in his Essays on Poetry and Music, and by Scott in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. ALBANIA. O LOVED Albania! hardy nurse of men! Hear! goddess, hear! that on the beryl flood, Enthroned of old, amid the waters sound, Reign'st far and wide o'er many a sea-girt spot. Where trusted lie the monarchy's last gems, The sceptre, sword, and crown, that graced the brows, Since father Fergus, of an hundred kings: Or if, along the well-contested ground, The warlike Border-land, thou marchest proud, To seek thee, though thy loved St. David's work; Hail, land of bowmen! seed of those who scorned Thy bounty, thy parental cares forget, Hissing with viper's tongue ?-who born of thee, Now twice twelve years have drawn thy vital air, |